[tremon]

In a different universe, I think Microsoft [..] builds “AWS” and “Chrome” around the IIS/IE combination. With reason to abandon the Wintel cash cow, IE may not have been so distastefully bad.

Instead, we would have TCP/IP replaced my Microsoft QUIC(tm), accompanied by a 40,000-page specification riddled with "just to what IIS does" explanations, thereby ensuring no other browser could ever emerge.

[aparsons]

It’s possible. Steve Jobs said Microsoft lacked taste. But they were also able to build the Xbox, Zune, Surface etc. If they realized the internet was a consumer products, very likely they change the heading.

From what I heard, by 1999 they knew they had mispredicted their internet strategy, but everyone was too fearful of the US government to make drastic changes. One friend said they couldn’t mention competitors by name in their org. So they stuck to their guns and doubled down on enterprise servers and OSes. I don’t recall when MsSQL started, but it was another step in that direction.